Stoneforge Mystic

Creature — Kor Artificer

When Stoneforge Mystic enters the battlefield, you may search your library for an Equipment card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.

, : You may put an Equipment card from your hand onto the battlefield.

Discussion (51)

YamishiTheWickedOne on ₣₳₦₲ɆĐ ₮ⱧⱤɆ₳₮₴ (ⱧɎ₱ɆⱤ ₳₲₲ⱤɆ₴₴łVɆ V₳₥₱łⱤɆ₴)

6 days ago

Other things off the top of my head...

Equipment tutors, because this strategy lives and dies by skullclamp. Stoneforge Mystic , Enlightened Tutor and Open the Armory and Steelshaper's Gift come to mind.

Various lords. Take your pick. Vamps have a ton. I wanna mention Sanctum Seeker for the life drain and there was some Orc or something who had a similar effect.

Nameless Inversion . it's a creature hate spell that counts as "casting a vampire".

Obelisk of Urd . easy buff, use once you're done with clamp.

Mavren Fein, Dusk Apostle . This deck is hyper aggressive and swarms the board with attackers like nothing else in EDH. He gives you more free creatures.

Bloodcrazed Paladin as an out against boardwipes.

Yahenni. He's actually good in this format just as a hard to kill beater.

I'm sure I can come up with more ideas. I like the deck a lot.

nUKe13 on nUKe13 Mardu Pyromancer

1 week ago

YamishiTheWickedOne I’ve seen the recent builds with Stoneforge Mystic . I think it is a good creature with a great ability. I also think it has been, somewhat, power crept. I think you could build Mardu Pyromancer around it; I think this build, currently, can forgo having to make room.

Bedlam Reveler is straight gas. Honestly, it provides so much advantage in the mid game. I don’t play the full copies since Seasoned Pyromancer does its effect in a sense. As for Unearth + Fulminator Mage , if your meta is all Tron and Titan decks, go for it. This current build maxes out on sorcery and instants to take advantage of Young Pyromancer , Seasoned Pyromancer , and Bedlam Reveler . But I do like Fulminator Mage and Unearth is pretty versatile as well. That’s the nice thing about Mardu Pyromancer: it allows the creator and pilot to personalize the build.

BoardDumb on To War Enchantresses! A Mono White Aura Deck

1 week ago

Not a bad idea. I think auras are widely overlooked and I see potential here.

I think there's room for the devotion mech to be strengthened for the benefit of Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx , and some room to even make the deck somewhat more competitive if you're interested.

I would consider cards like Worship , which become easier to cast with Hero of Iroas already maxed out in the MB, and Leyline of Sanctity which provides 2 white symbols for devotion to white. Each offer quite a frustrating foil to a good number of and burn and hate decks.

In order to make room, I would suggest boarding or removing at least 1 or more Hyena Umbra and Angelic Destiny each. I also suggest a slight thinning out of auras in general, try for no more than 20, to offer the player a contingent against hand flooding uncastable auras early game, and thus, mulligans.

Umbra Mystic makes Hyena Umbra a fair bit redundant, you have plenty offering first strike as it is, making first strike also I think a bit redundant, so even replacing Hyena Umbra with stronger, more mana costly white auras which can benefit from Hero of Iroas , would be another suggestion here.

This is the most painful suggestion, due to the $$ involved... If you can get your hands on 4x Stoneforge Mystic and at least 1x Sword of Fire and Ice , that there is a great combo for both drawing cards and dealing with decks with aura removal. I would recommend thy be at least in the sideboard.

Omegaman on Emmara, Soul of Sacrifice

1 week ago

Update #1: Stoneforge Mystic is out (due to being sold) and Marwyn, the Nurturer has taken her place as a second, and possibly better, Viridian Joiner . Autumn's Veil is out for the better Veil of Summer .

Oloro_Magic on I think there's a better ...

1 week ago

This has actually been done some by other people in the Whirza community; I recommended that you check out Kannister's stream over on twitch where he is always testing out new variants on Urza. The Karn version is certainly powerful but really it shows what has always been the weakest part of the Urza deck, and that is that it really doesn't do anything amazing.

Kannister explained this once much better than I ever could, but essentially the Urza decks, at least the dominant versions, fall into two categories (I don't include Paradoxical Outcome Urza as I find that to be a very different kind of deck): Stoneforge Mystic Urza and Goblin Engineer Urza. We will start with the Engineer versions first as those have had more success up to this posting. As Kannister explained these builds kind of bridge the line between prison and combo, Goblin Engineer playing particularly well with Ensnaring Bridge . However, when you really look at these lists the deck is at best an average prison deck, it doesn't fully commit to the plan and isn't wholly concerned with locking its opponent; it really only plays a few silver bullets and bridge to slow down the game in most cases. Likewise the combo aspect of the deck is far from optimal as the deck does not have a very streamlined way to consistently end the game turn 3 as its potential is, for this reason it is an average combo deck. The genius behind the list comes when you put those two together, as the combo pieces, particularly Urza, and Thopter Foundry do a lot in the way of slowing down the game and generating continued value. And Goblin Engineer feeds perfectly into the combo being able to fetch either piece. Those two average parts make the deck incredibly complete and difficult to play against.

The stoneforge versions are essentially the same, but instead of the prison aspect, they have a midrange plan that can simply steal games, stoneforge also able to fetch up half the combo if needed.

The Karn versions of the deck represent the most powerful thing that can be done likely, but they come at a great cost, as your list reflects, and as Kannister has noted, playing Karn likely means you can't really play Whir of Invention and because of that you have to make a choice. Do you want the flexibility of Whir and the instant speed, or do you want to go all in on Karn and play a very toolbox approach to the deck. Most chose the former, yet Urza is good enough that the Karn route remains a fine option.

I should also note that in your list you have a Krark-Clan Ironworks in the sideboard. That card is very banned, in fact if it were not banned, myself and many others would likely still be playing Ironworks combo and Urza likely would have a home there somehow.

heckproof on So I have an interesting ...

2 weeks ago

DuTogira

Sorry to hijack the thread, even for a moment. Spell Snare is quite good right now and I think most control decks ought to be running 1-2. Consider how many strategies at the moment center around 2-drops. Snare hits Stoneforge Mystic out of Stoneblade, Tarmogoyf and Wrenn and Six out of Jund (with W6 being the higher priority; I think it may be stealthily too good for Modern), both halves of the Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek combo out of Whirza (admittedly they tutor for the combo most of the time, but Spell Snare has also saved my butt a number of times in this case), and even some of the relevant Burn spells in the matchup (countering Eidolon of the Great Revel will save your life). If you control players aren’t running Spell Snare , why not? It’s great. Run it!!

Okay, semi-topical rant over. In regards to your brew, I would say that you could use some more play against Burn. In general, I would say don’t play counterspells and targeted discard in the same deck because it makes your gameplan awkward. Stick to either instant or sorcery speed control. There’s a guy named Corey Burkhart who’s a phenomenal Grixis player. I’d imagine he’s probably playing some form of Grixis Control, so I would look at how he sideboards and what his removal ratio is like.

I think that’s about all I got. Hope this helped in some way!

ToolmasterOfBrainerd on Grixis Control

2 weeks ago

I'm down for that.

Concerning counterspells, a lot of my opinions of counterspells in modern are shaped by the old meta of Humans and Phoenix. Phoenix ate the hammer and Humans has basically died. Looking at the metagame, counterspells look really good right now. So they are probably as good as you say and my reluctance is an artifact of being out-of-touch with the meta.

I do want to say that counterspells are a terrible way to answer creatures. Creature-heavy decks tend to rely on Aether Vial and Cavern of Souls . Again, Humans is basically gone, so you can actually mana leak creatures again, but I'm still wary of the lingering anti-countermagic cards. Spell Snaring a Tarmogoyf , Stoneforge Mystic , or Eidolon of the Great Revel are among the best feelings in modern. Especially Eidolon. Historically I've loved Terminate ; these days Dreadbore is decent.

Targeted discard I can swing over and agree. If you're trying to set up to slam Bolas, discard spells look a lot better.

I still disagree on cantrips. They are good precisely because you have diversity in your answers. You will invariably need to find a particular card or card type. If you need to kill a Tarmogoyf, then you want to use your cantrips to find Fatal Push and avoid hitting, say, Inquisition of Kozilek or Mana Leak when it's already too late. Opt is very lackluster in general. I'd play Serum Visions instead. It feels so much better to cast. Sorcery-speed is fine; especially if you already have Inquisition and Thoughtseize.

I still think Vraska's Contempt is standard crap. It seems very very mediocre vs Jund. Against Jund, efficiency is where you can stay ahead. That matchup is won by trading favorably early (spell snare the Wrenn and Six , bolt the Bob, push the Scooze, mana leak the Liliana), and then pulling way ahead with Snapcaster Mage , Kolaghan's Command , Cryptic Command , and planeswalkers. Vraska's Contempt is so mana-inefficient. And it doesn't do anything meaningfully better than Lightning Bolt .

On the flip side, there are so many problems with Vraska's Contempt vs Tron, and that approach to Tron as a whole. Without testing the matchup, I expect that your Tron matchup is nearly unwinnable in game 1. Even if you can counter the planeswalkers, they will get you with Ulamog or Wurmcoil. In the long run, they almost always have more threats than you have answers. I have found that keeping them off of tron is the best way to beat them, but it's never better than 50/50.

Going 14 turns is fine, but the big mana decks love to feast on this style of deck. Especially Amulet Titan and Tron. Amulet Titan can fetch Cavern of Souls to push Titans through, and once the chain starts it's almost impossible to keep up with removal spells.

jaymc1130 on So I have an interesting ...

2 weeks ago

I've been playing some Modern lately ever since the unbanning of Stoneforge Mystic as this is one of my all time favorite cards as well as all time favorite archetypes. I love control decks in constructed play, I love the style, the thought required to play the decks correctly, the feeling of solving a puzzle when you manage to win with them. Naturally with SFM's return I brewed up a handful of decks, got as up to speed on the Modern Format as I could, and started playtesting Stoneblade brews and the various top decks in the format.

Having tried a number of different variations of the Stoneblade concept against the format staples I began to notice a bit of a pattern. Namely, that the wins with the archetype were most often not coming from lines related to SFM at all, but rather establishing complete control over the game state and abusing Jace, the Mind Sculptor to Fate Seal the way to victory. All of this got me thinking about what I enjoyed most about the deck and I realized it wasn't actually SFM at all.

It was Jace.

The dude is a bad, bad mama jamma. I got to thinking about things some more and wondered if just building around Jace as the primary focus was a concept that could work. I decided on Grixis colors and got to brewing. I tried a number of ideas but eventually realized Jace alone wouldn't be getting the job done as often as I'd like and started looking for a partner in crime for him. The usual suspects got tried like Liliana of the Veil and seemed underwhelming. Then I figured if I was working this angle why not give something that seems almost unplayable in Modern a shot: Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God . The play pattern of the deck tended toward lots of longer games, a lot of draw-go hand shredding that disrupted play patterns of format staples to allow for these longer game play patterns to be relevant, and a lot of fun testing the idea.

Having put the concept through some paces I've arrived at what I think is actually a viable core of the deck. which can be found here: Bolas Control. What I'd like from any of you who might happen to read this is your thoughts on Modern in general, potential tweaks and alterations to the deck that could improve it, matchup considerations, and general questions, comments, and concerns.

I think this concept could be quite a bit of fun to toss around as an idea and fine tune, so let me know what ya think folks